Pervaporation as a tool in chemical engineering: a new era?

• Lab-scale organophilic pervaporation membranes have a great potential when scaled up.
• Pervaporation membrane reactors are not limited to water removal.
• Pervaporation membranes for bioethanol should have a higher flux with the same selectivity.

Most applications of pervaporation today are in solvent dehydration. This is about to change, considering the new trends in membrane development and the needs in chemical engineering. This paper identifies three areas in which pervaporation can become a breakthrough technology, if the right direction in development is chosen: organophilic separation, membrane reactors and bioethanol upgrading. The most attention is paid to the development of more selective membranes. Even though such membranes are needed, this should be complemented by scale-up and engineering efforts, to make penetration into the market possible, and to find creative engineered solutions based on hybrids and cascades, in which the separation of a single step can be enhanced.For organophilic separations, many membrane materials have already been developed today, with a potential that is still unexplored; some hints on membrane materials of interest are given in the paper. For membrane reactors, chemical engineers should make use of the vast potential of this technology by designing applications with added value in chemicals production. The use of membranes in bioethanol production is hampered by the performance of current membranes; however, this is more related to the flux than to the selectivity.